Henri Émile Benoît Matisse was a French artist, leader of the Fauve group, regarded as one of the great formative figures in 20th-century art, and a master of the use of color and form to convey emotional expression. Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in northern France on December 31, 1869. The son of a middle-class family, he studied and began to practice law. In 1890, however, while recovering slowly from an attack of appendicitis, he became intrigued by the practice of painting. Unlike so many great art masters, Matisse did not begin painting as a young prodigious artist. At first, Matisse’s fath